More than most of the vague references or terrible dad jokes that serve as my blog post titles, this one probably needs a bit of an explainer. Nocturne: a work of art dealing with evening or night; especially : a dreamy pensive composition. Valdostano: from the Aosta Valley in Italy. Number 3, because this was my third attempt circling that valley for the Tor Des Geants. Like so many other random things, I learned the word nocturne from playing Zelda as a kid.
But this year was unique. Looking back at it, now a few months later, it does feel like a dreamy musical composition – an intricate web of people and pieces that had to perfectly come together at just the right times, weaving their way through multiple parts with subtle but powerful shifts in tempo, key, and dynamics. I did not finish where I had hoped to, but I was left in awe of the experience I had. It had never been made more clear to me that that’s what I want to spend the remainder of my running years doing: things that even when they don’t turn out as planned I’m left with no choice but to say, “Wow, what an awesome experience! I sure am glad I did that.”
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